This special topic poll, conducted September 24-25, 1988, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. The focus of this data collection was the opinions of registered voters prior to and immediately following the first presidential debate held September 25, 1988.
Registered voters polled prior to the first presidential debate were asked about the likelihood that they would vote in the Novembe... (more info)

This special topic poll, conducted September 24-25, 1988, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. The focus of this data collection was the opinions of registered voters prior to and immediately following the first presidential debate held September 25, 1988.
Registered voters polled prior to the first presidential debate were asked about the likelihood that they would vote in the November 1988 general election, whether they planned to watch the first presidential debate, for whom they would vote if the presidential election were held that day, and the strength of their support for this candidate. Immediately following the debate, 710 respondents were recontacted about whether they had watched the debate, which candidate had won, and for whom they would vote for if the presidential election were held that day. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, household income, political party affiliation, and education level.

Universe:
Registered voters aged 18 and over living in households with
telephones in the 48 contiguous United States.

Data Types:
survey data

Data Collection Notes:

The data do not include a weight variable.

To protect respondent confidentiality, respondent names were removed from the data file. The original data file contained two records per case and was reformatted into a data file with one record per case.

ICPSR added a unique sequential record identifier variable named CASEID.

According to the data collection instrument, code 3 in the variable Q13 (Education Level) included respondents who answered that they had attended a technical school.

The data collection was produced by Chilton Research Services of Radnor, PA.

Methodology

Sample:
Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within households, the respondent selected was the adult living in the household who was a registered voter, who last had a birthday, and who was home at the time of the interview.

Mode of Data Collection:
telephone interview

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Created variable labels and/or value labels.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1990-05-01

Version History:

2010-02-18 Respondent names were removed from the data file. SPSS, SAS, and Stata setup and system files were added. Question text was also added to the codebook.

2006-11-30 SAS, SPSS, and Stata setup files have been added to this data collection.